After The Searching
by pgrabia
Summary: When House disappears after an argument with Cuddy, Wilson sets out to find him.  A reaction fic to Ep. 7x3 "Unwritten".  Warning: Contains spoilers for eps up to and including 7x3; coarse language.  House/Wilson friendship-UST  boarders on pre-slash .


**Title: ****After The Searching**

**Author:** pgrabia

**Word Count:** 1856

**Pairings/Characters:** House/Wilson friendship-UST (bordering on pre-slash)/House, Wilson, mention of Cuddy and Sam.

**Warnings: **Spoilers for all seasons up to and including episode 7x3 "Unwritten".

**Rating: PG-13** for the F-Bomb (only one) and mature subject matter.

**A/N:** This is a post-episode response to the episode 7x3 "Unwritten". It takes place the morning following the end of the episode.

**(~*~)**

After searching all night for him, I found him sitting in a spanking new bus shelter. It was about six in the morning and pouring rain. Everything about me was soaked and I'd long given up on my umbrella after a gust of wind had turned it inside out. House looked perfectly dry. He was slumped on the metal bench staring straight ahead into middle space with tired, hooded eyes. His face was one of sheer exhaustion and despondency. He'd rested his cane against the transparent Plexiglas wall opposite him and his arms hung limply down from his shoulders so that his hands rested on the seat on either side of him.

There was no sign of his Repsol anywhere when I pulled up and parked across the street from the shelter. He'd probably deserted it somewhere and walked to this place. _No matter_, I told myself as I climbed out of my car and closed the door, locking it with my key fob, we'll retrieve it later—_after I give him a piece of my mind for scaring both Lisa and I shitless._ Looking both ways I waited until a truck drove past and then jogged across the quiet road.

He didn't seem to notice that I was there even though I was approaching him from the front; too lost in his thoughts, it appeared.

As I moved closer I recognized the deep cut and bruise just above his left eye, the nasty abrasion on his cheek bone that had bled and clotted already, the scuff marks on his leather jacket, tears in his jeans, particularly along his left hip where it was stained with dried and wet blood. My heart sunk into my stomach. He hadn't just parked his bike somewhere and walked for a little while. He'd crashed his death-wish on wheels somewhere.

_Well, at least he was able to walk away from it._

When House still didn't acknowledge my presence once I was down on my haunches in front of him, examining the cut that crossed his eyebrow and the deepening bruise along his hairline above it, I grew worried.

"House?" I said to him, sounding more alarmed than I would have liked. "House, can you hear me?" I waved my hands in front of his glazed over eyes. They moved slowly in their sockets to look at me but I wasn't certain that they were actually seeing me. Concussion? Brain bleed? He had obviously hit his head—hadn't he been riding with his helmet? I didn't see it with him but he could have left it with the bike; or not worn it all in an act of reckless stupidity.

I grabbed a penlight out of the inner pocket of my overcoat and flashed it in his eyes as I gently lifted the lids for a better look. His pupils were constricted to pin points. The whites were bloodshot. I turned off the penlight and put it away and quickly assessed his bloody hip as having suffered a grade two abrasion.

With a sigh I took a seat beside him on the bench. We sat silently and then I held out my hand, palm up. Wordlessly House reached into his pocket and pulled out the expected amber vial and placed it into my hand. I looked at the label. The name of the patient had been scratched but clear as day was the word Vicodin. In the top corner was the name of the dispensing physician. I didn't recognize it. I wrapped my fingers around the bottle tightly. The dispensing date was yesterday.

I was disappointed and worried, not angry.

"How many did you take?" I asked him softly, concerned that he may have taken too many and required emergent medical attention if his sedation and slow-response were any indication.

"Three," he answered, not meeting my eyes, "last night. Two this morning."

Nodding I proffered the vial back to him. His cloudy blue eyes looked up at me, holding a hint of confusion in their depths.

"They're yours," I told him simply, with a half-shrug

After a moment of hesitation he reached out to grab the bottle. I closed my hand around both it and his hand, which was cold, limp. House stared at our joined hands and then back up at me questioningly.

I didn't let go. "What happened?" I asked, trying to sound as gentle and compassionate as I knew how, and I had years of practice at it. He was in a very vulnerable state of mind. If I'd learned anything in the past year, it was that yelling at him or lecturing him would only hurt him more than he was already hurting. I didn't want to do that.

"Lisa didn't tell you?" he asked, slurring his words slightly. I wondered if he hadn't taken more than two this morning, but I let that slide.

"I want to hear _your_ side," was my response.

He looked away and was silent for a minute before answering with a sigh in his voice.

"I screamed at her and she told me it was over and threw me out of her house," was his simplistic answer. I knew there was more to the story and not just because of what Cuddy had told me; I knew all too well that people didn't end a relationship with each other for something as insignificant as an argument.

"Care to elaborate?" I inquired, raising an eyebrow. I half-smiled sadly so he would know that I wasn't interrogating him so I could yell at him, but that I was asking because I cared. I did, I really did.

"I told her that I loved her but I was tired of walking on eggshells every moment of the day," House explained, his voice deep and gravelly, completely devoid of emotion. "I'm not me when I'm around her. I can't be because if I were she'd realize how incompatible we really are and know with the same certainty I do that our relationship was a mistake. I told her that who I am as a whole person is a lot different from the aspect of me she saw under the rubble of the collapsed building, breaking it to a dying woman that I had to saw her leg off. She tried one of her trite, pithy reassurances with me but this time I didn't pretend to believe her. I told her that she couldn't solve this problem with a feel good thirty-second solution and that it may have worked with an idiot like Lucas, but not with me. That's when she asked me if I was breaking up with her."

I nodded. "What did you say?" I asked after a heartbeat. It was then that I noticed that I was still holding his hand. I didn't want to let go, and he didn't seem to be in too big of a rush for me to either.

House sighed and looked down at the floor. "I said yes," he told me. "She told me to leave and not come back. So I did. As I was riding all I wanted was the pain to go away. All of it-the pain in my leg and the pain inside. So when I got back to my apartment I called a guy I know."

_His dealer_, I thought, filling in the blank. I had known that he was getting his Vicodin from a source other than my prescription pad back when he was still using on a regular basis. There had been too many stashed away in his apartment at the time he'd gone to Mayfield.

"I met him at his place in downtown Princeton," my best friend went on in his narcotic monotone. "Took three there and rode out the high. When I started to come down, I took to the road on my bike, hit a traffic barrier a few blocks away and then walked here. I took two more about half-an-hour before you found me."

He was high right now, explaining his odd behavior. I closed my eyes for a moment, my emotions threatening to overwhelm me.

"Why didn't you call me?" I whispered, looking at him sadly.

Shrugging, House looked at me. "I didn't want to disturb you and Sam."

Guilt washed over me and I didn't try to repress it. I deserved to feel it. "House, don't you know yet that I would have dropped everything to come to you if you'd called me for help. Maybe you don't. Maybe my breaking my word and throwing you out of your home was a message to you that I didn't care. But I do. I fucked up, but I don't intend on doing that again."

He said nothing to that. Selfishly I wanted him to assure me that we were completely okay again, but I knew that wasn't true and that House wouldn't lie to me to assuage my guilt. I surveyed the world around us, taking in our location again and shivered at the feeling of déjà vu.

Looking back at him I asked, "So why did you decide to come here?"

House shrugged. "I called Nolan after I came down from the first three pills," he answered. "He told me to."

_Well, it makes sense_, I decided grimly, even though I wished it hadn't come to this.

House looked down at our joined hands and gave me a lop-sided smile. "Does this mean we're going steady?"

I smiled in return but surprisingly I didn't blush. I wasn't embarrassed, and I didn't let go, either.

"Did you want to?" I asked, only half-joking.

"Maybe after I get over the break-up," he answered. "You wouldn't want to date someone on the rebound, you know."

Despite the grin on his face there was something in his eyes that caused me to wonder if he was only half-joking as well—and that didn't bother me.

I finally released my hold on his hand, a little sad to end the contact. House left the vial of Vicodin in my hand.

"You want to come with?" My best friend asked as he rose slowly—and a little unsteadily—to his feet.

"Do you want me to?" I returned, ready to do anything he asked of me. There was no way I was going to let him down again.

"Yeah," he murmured as he grabbed his cane and limped slowly out of the shelter. I followed closely behind him. He was moving awkwardly on two wounded legs. "Then you can take me to the hospital."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay." I agreed.

We walked side by side, our shoulders brushing occasionally as we climbed up the steps to Mayfield's heavy front doors together.

**~fin~**


End file.
